Optimising the Business Value of IT Investment

Why do so many IT projects fail? Our view is that the fatal decisions are made at the design phase of a project by selecting the wrong design philosophy. Often, a project is initiated due to a perceived business need, but by inappropriately following an IT centric design approach the project eventually loses sight of the original business problem. The potential results are, at best, more cost and lower benefits than anticipated and, at worst an abandoned project with nothing to show for it.¹

Two Design Philosophies:

To generalise, a project can adopt two design philosophies:

IT Centric Design. This approach focuses on identifying the best IT architecture as soon as possible, then developing a project flightplan to deliver this architecture as efficiently as possible.
Business Centric Design. The approach identifies and values the desired capabilities, and builds a flightplan to capture business value, sometimes by delaying spending on IT until business processes have been redefined.

it_investment_business_value2

We are not asserting that IT Centric Design is always wrong. On the contrary, many businesses are successful only because they have built business processes around efficient use of IT. The key is to make a proactive decision on which is best upfront, and not default to an IT centric design because this reflects the skills of the project team.

Business Centric Design is, unfortunately, harder to do because it requires and active and ongoing dialog between 2 groups with different languages and culture – IT professionals and business professionals. Pacific Strategy Partners has developed a rigorous approach to deliver Business Centric Design by working with some of Australia’s leading financial institutions to guide $1bn + investment programs. Our Discussion Document has more details of our approach and case studies.

¹Lest this be thought hyperbole, consider the cases of the NSW Public Transport ticketing project and the Sydney Water billing system

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